MasterV said:
I pretty much liked a lot of the stuff you listed as bad, except how long it took to get the sword. If you played it before though, it takes somewhere around 10 to 15 minutes to get it, and even on my first run I got through the "Metal Gear" section in a period of an hour. I actually quite liked that "Metal Gear" section too.
I found the overworld to be interesting, yes, a lot of places were small islands with little to mediocre purpose, but they provided lots of playtime for completionists. Exploring each island and figuring out how some things on the island works, and even revisiting the major islands and finding new things adds a lot of playtime for me. It had a bunch of sidequests to do, the story and game was quite lengthy, the combat was fun as you stated, and there was a lot of optional stuff for completionists like myself to do. Hell, it is among my favorites. My favorite goes back to old school like Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, and even Majora's Mask, which is my number one favorite. That game is way too underrated. It was fun as hell.
I see what you are saying about how it slowly changed throughout the years, but your idea of them taking a completely different game and slapping names and characters on it is more than a little overboard. To be honest, I've never played the first Zelda game, but I've played just about every other Zelda game to date, and looking more in depth after that post, see how it has changed.
But I don't understand why that is a bad thing. It changed, sure, but was it to something bad? The puzzles are fun to solve, especially in dungeons. If everything was a straightforward "kill everything to move on" it wouldn't be a fun or challenging game. The whole game often gives you something to look forward to, like that new piece of equipment at the next dungeon, or you see some structure that you are sure a piece of equipment utilizes and you want it, like perhaps the targets for the Hookshot/Longshot for example. Sometimes these aren't even straightforward, it takes logic and thought as to how to use some items and other things to move on or get to your desired destination. For example, Twilight Princess in the desert dungeon. The treasure was the Spinner, and a majority of the dungeon had a series of mechanisms utilizing this, and often it involved puzzles and challenges. I believe I got stuck on one part for half an hour as I kept missing the timing or getting hit by the rail running enemies that deal damage and knock you to the floor. The boss battle? I loved it. It was very creative with the usage of the spinner in fighting it. It was fun and challenging, that's for sure...
Backtracking. Now that is a major boosting factor I liked, and as a person who likes to do everything there is to be done in a game before moving on, I do this in every game I've played. It adds many hours of playtime. The main reason I liked the DS Games was probably because it maintained some aspects of Zelda games while allowing me to play it while I can't be sitting in front of a TV. They are not true Zelda games, I acknowledge that completely.
I might also bring up some other games to the discussion of "slapping franchise titles to completely different games".
The Mario and Luigi RPG games. 3 of them, all of them are fun as hell, and are rather humorous. It involves puzzle solving, typical RPG elements, a nice battle system, just an overall good game and it maintains the same Mario-esque feel. It does not feel alien to me at all, and if it does, that is with good reason, as it is purposeful. Example given, the second game has the whole kingdom in destruction for half the game. The plot was wacky, but it was still like an extension of the first game with even more of the stuff I liked.
I also find Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, both similar to each other, to be great games. It involves a large degree of strategy in various areas, logic, etc and is a fun game to play.
Overall, I both agree and disagree with some of your comments. Things have changed over the years, they aren't quite the same, and that they aren't as good as they were back then, but I retain my opinion that things are still good for Nintendo, they crank out great games all the time, and as long as they keep doing the same, taking years to develop a quality game rather than less than a single year, I will remain loyal to them. I do play other consoles and see where Nintendo fails and others succeed, but where Nintendo succeeds and others fail, I stand by them.
